The Talksis a weekly updated online interview magazine. Over the past decade its founders Johannes Bonke and Sven Schumann have met with cultural figures of all kinds.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

Charlotte Rampling on Courage:

I think you have to be brave. I think you have to think of being; I think you have to think of being someone. If you’re an actor, you’re going to incarnate a human being. If you are brave and if you want to actually experience what it is like, really, you have to be a developing actor and a developing human being at the same time, because the two things are always together. You can’t develop as a human being and not develop as an actor and vice-versa.

Denzel Washington on playing the bad guy:

As an actor in the theater you’re taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can’t say, “Oh, I’m a bad guy.” How do you play that?

Yohji Yamamoto on women and clothing:

When I started making clothes for my line Y’s in 1977, all I wanted was for women to wear men’s clothes. I jumped on the idea of designing coats for women. It meant something to me – the idea of a coat guarding and hiding a woman’s body. For me, a woman who is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one’s favor, strong yet subtle at the same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the more it emerges from the very heart of her existence. A pair of brilliantly cut cotton trousers can be more beautiful than a gorgeous silk gown.